News from March 2012

The Deepwater Horizon incident demonstrated that most of the oil left is deep offshore or in other difficult to reach locations. Moreover, obtaining the oil remaining in currently producing reservoirs requires additional equipment and technology that comes at a higher price in both capital and energy. In this regard, the physical limitations on producing ever-increasing […]

Kenya announced on Monday its first oil discovery, saying it was found in the northern part of the country where British Tullow Oil Plc has been conducting exploratory drilling. The announcement sent the company’s shares higher. Kenya and its neighbours in east Africa have become an international hot spot for oil and gas exploration after […]

UK activists from the ‘Stop the War Coalition’ have held a day of action to speak out against war with Iran. Protesters took to the streets of 15 major British cities. In Israel, hundreds marched in Tel Aviv protesting the war. The coalition’s unit in Nottingham declares on its website, that the United States has […]

This essay was originally written between December of 2010 and February of 2011. Soon after it was submitted to The Oil Drum, where it underwent a long process of review that greatly improved it; nevertheless it was archived without being ever published. Since its content could have had a negative impact on the scientific career […]

Like oil and clean water, phosphorus supplies could run out, leading to famine and war, scientists warn The sun was about to set when Robert L. Shirley drove his beige pickup onto the Pamlico River ferry. He was joined by fellow Potash Corp. employees who had just finished the day shift mining what scientists say […]

We’re Spending Money Combating the Wrong Dangers Studies show that people are worry about the wrong things. We are terrified of things that will probably never happen, and underestimate the real dangers which face us. As we noted last year, the extreme vulnerability of nuclear power plants to solar flares is a very real threat […]

Most people reading this would probably find Merriam, Kansas, very familiar. Not because they’ve been there, but because it’s a lot like home. Merriam is usually described as a suburb of Kansas City, Kans.—a small town that grew into a residential center for people who worked in the much larger city nearby. Yet the mental […]

The Future of Oil: Peak Prices, Peak Production, Piqued Consumers – Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming – 2008-06-11 – WASHINGTON (June 9, 2008) – As prices at the pump reach record levels on a daily basis, many consumers and analysts are asking the same questions: How bad could prices get? And what […]

If you have the power and the desire to bring down oil prices, the best way to proceed is to start bringing them down. The easiest and fastest method would be to make more supplies available to the world market and keep adding until you reach your target price. The less you say about what […]

From the beginning of time, people have used a process to navigate their way around their environment. Today we call this process “Dead Reckoning”. In its simplest form, one starts from a known reference point and heads out in a particular direction for a certain number of steps, miles, days or weeks, to arrive at […]

There is some debate in the main-stream press about the relative causes and impacts of the rising gasoline price on the overall economy. (I paid $4.40 per gallon in Silicon Valley on Sunday, though only $3.67 in mid-Missouri today). As noted in my previous post, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is unique in its potential […]

Talk is cheap. Especially when you’re in the middle of an oil price war. Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi certainly didn’t expect global oil markets to send the price of crude tumbling just because he said “I think high prices are unjustified today” at a March 20 press conference in Qatar. That’s why he […]

leading US-based energy consulting firm says oil price may hit $240 a barrel and economic growth may fall by over 25 percent if Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz in reaction to the Western sanctions. Analysts at IHS Global Insight also told reporters that Iran can easily close the strategic strait and disrupt global oil […]

In an exclusive report, Jerusalem-based DEBKAfile reports that both Israel and the United States are on the same page in regard to launching an attack on Iran. “American and Israeli intelligence evaluations of the state of Iran’s program are in accord – contrary to the impression gained from Obama administration officials,” DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported on March […]

This article presents a dynamic growth model with energy as an input in the production function. The available stock of energy resources is ordered by a quality parameter based on energy accounting: the “Energy Return on Energy Invested” (EROI). To our knowledge this is the first paper where EROI fits in a neoclassical growth model […]

The US government announced recently a 5% tariff on China-made solar products. The tariff is considered low. Nevertheless, the industry has been concerned about whether or not Europe will take on similar investigations against China-based solar firms. China-based media reports noted that applications for such an investigation to take place in Europe may be handed […]

Peak oil and the economy Senior editor of TheAutomaticEarth.org, which chronicles and interprets the ongoing credit crunch, and former editor of The Oil Drum Canada, where she wrote on peak oil and finance. She is an international speaker on energy and global finance and is touring New Zealand until 22 April. Play (Windows) Play (Other) […]

Global investor Jim Rogers expects serious economic catastrophe to befall the US and other western governments that debase their currency, and suffer from a serious ageing and diminution of their productive classes. Debt and demographic decline cast an ominous pall over the near to intermediate term future for these countries. Rogers also expects widespread food […]

One of the points that economists have a really hard time getting over, probably because it is so counter-intuitive, is that we human beings don’t really consume resources, we create them. This has implications for huge swathes of the environmental movement and also for certain parts of the Peak Oil theory. Please note that I’m […]

It is a curious thing when a mindset develops. Thoughts, data interpretation, reactions, and behaviors become solidified into expectations about what is normal and what is to come as that sense of normal changes. It’s an important process of human development, and it is a particularly interesting thing to look at on a national scale […]

Years ago, £1 was enough to buy a portion of chips and a can of pop for lunch, not to mention a bar of chocolate on the way home from school. For older kids, it was also enough to buy two litres of petrol for a clapped out hatchback. No more. As crude oil again hits $125 […]

Energy companies in search of oil riches rivaling the biggest finds from Brazil to Angola are flocking to Texas shale, where new wells have triggered a 230- fold increase in crude output in three years. More than 115 years after a gusher 55 miles (88 kilometers) south of Dallas ushered in Texas’ first oil boom, […]

On gasoline prices, President Obama is starting to learn the lesson of his predecessors. The quickest way to lower gasoline prices is by calling on Saudi Arabia. For three decades, US presidents have called on Saudi Arabia to get them out of an oil price bind. Saudi Arabia helped President Ronald Reagan get a leg […]

In a number of articles The New York Times has shown that it is not concerned about Peak Oil. On 23 March it headed page 1 with the article, “U.S. Inches Toward Goal of Energy Independence” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/business/energy-environment/inching-to…). The article reminds us that since Nixon’s time every president has had the same goal of giving the […]

Emirates, the biggest airline by international traffic, said more carriers will go bust this year as fuel costs and sluggish economies undermine profitability. “We can reel off a whole load of airlines that are teetering on the brink or are really gone,” Tim Clark, the Dubai-based carrier’s president, said in an interview. “Roll this forward […]

Iranian oil exports have fallen significantly in March, industry sources said on Friday, as some buyers stop or scale back purchases to abide by Western sanctions aimed at slowing Tehran’s nuclear program. Crude exports from Iran appear to have fallen this month by around 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), or 14 percent, according to estimates […]